Intergenerational Conflicts- Myth or Reallity-

Mohammad Hossein Panahi

Intergenerational Conflicts- Myth or Reallity-

Abstract

One of the important social issues attracting the attention of social thinkers in post WWII era has been the issue of intergenerational conflict. Presented by scholars such as Karl Manheim and Margaret Mead, it was thought that in post WWII era intergenerational conflicts or gap rose to a degree that it made the communication and understanding between pre and post WWII generations very difficult. It was theorized that this unbridgeable gap between the two generations was due to grave and rapid social changes that occurred in that era, so that these two generations experienced and lived in two totally different worlds. Although this thesis was criticized in the west with later studies, the issue of generation gap continues to be one of the cross culturally studied subjects. It is claimed that in the developing countries, such as Iran, which experience rapid social change in their transformation from traditional to modern societies, a high level of generation gap has emerged. Focusing on the studies carried out in Iran by the author and others, this paper proposes that in order to acquire deeper understanding of the phenomenon, and the way to encounter it, generation gap should be analyzed into value-oriented and norm-oriented types. The findings in this research revealed that both value-oriented and norm-oriented generation gaps in Iran were considerably wide.

Figures (9)

Table 1: Generation Differences in Economic Values (in percent)

Table 2: Generation Differences in Social Values (in percent) A glance at Table 2 reveals that the highest difference between the two generations is about fame, which adds up to 3.3 percent, and still cannot be considered a meaningful generational difference. In fact, the table shows that in social values the two generations are almost identical.

Table 3: Generation Differences in Social Beliefs (in percent)

Table 7: Generation Differences in Some Religious Norms and Behaviors (Percent of Agreement) This table shows that the younger generation is much less interested in some religious norms and behaviors than the previous generation. The data especially reveal that the generation difference is higher in those activities that are collectively performed compared to individual actions. This accords with the process of individualization as societies get more modernized. Religious differences are more pronounced than differences in family issues probably due to the fact that family as a social institution is much more resilient than religion.

Table 10 shows than in 13 out of 21 (62%) of the norm-oriented ssues related to family life, religious, economic and social issues there is ess than 5 percent of difference between the two generations of pre and dost revolution Iran. In 5 of them the difference is 5 to 10 percent, showing 1 mild generation gap, and in 3 of them a moderate generation gap exists yetween the two generations. The lowest generation gap (1.9) is among sconomic norms and behaviors, and the highest (11.8) is among religious 10orms and behaviors. This reveals that the generation gap in religious 10orms and behaviors is considerable compared to other issues, which ‘ould be very important in an Islamic society. The average norm-oriented zeneration gap is 5.2 percent, which can be considered as a mild gap. Based on these findings, in norm-oriented issues, too, it is very Cae Ta 2 Table 10: A Summary of Norm-Oriented Generation Differences

This table shows that in 24 out of 34 values and norms (70% of them) no meaningful generation difference is observed. In 6 cases (17%) a mild generation gap is present. And in 4 cases (12%) one can claim that a moderate generation gap is confirmed. Overall, these findings do not support the existence of a major gap or divide between the two pre and post revolution Iranian generations, which seems quite normal for a developing and rapidly changing society; and that those claiming the existence of such a gap have to prove their claims via concrete empirical studies. Table 11: Overall Comparison of Value and Norm-Oriented Generation Gaps

Expanded Abstract: There was no abstract for this paper, instead, I decided to add the introduction of this paper, here, as an expanded abstract. Before the study framework of this paper is presented, some theoretical and methodological limits need ‎to be discussed.‎ First, it seems naive to imagine that the discourse of post – modernism or its so-called changes ‎could be relevant to countries, such as Iran, which are not being viewed as post-materialist, post-‎industrial societies. However, if one reads Inglehart’s ideas on the production of culture ‎‎(Inglehart, 1998) it becomes evident that the primary point for understanding current societies lies ‎in discarding the sociology of modernism’s theoretical postulates about the non-western societies. ‎One of these postulates is the modernist dichotomization of the world into geographical divisions, ‎in which one part of the world (the West) pioneers ‘progress’ based on technology and the other ‎‎(the East) needs to follow (Harrison, 1998:62). Having done away with this idea, we need to ‎replace it with a new postulate. For example, one that is no longer bound to geographical factors ‎or limited to the production of technology (e.g., Inglehart, 1998). In fact, it can be argued that ‎such a new postulate could cover a wider range of concepts including cultural change and social ‎dynamism. Thus, every individual society regardless of its level of technological progress could ‎enter into the process of cultural dynamism.‎ Second, the meaning of „generation“ and its application to the case of Iran also needs to be dealt ‎with. The traditional definition of „generation“ is based on a set of familial groups consisting of ‎grandparents, parents, and their offspring (e.g. Mannheim, 1972:276-320). Here, I take generation ‎as an age-specific term or as a course of time during which individuals of a set of age-groups can ‎create their own belief system and cultural praxis. In this sense, I assume that every generation ‎has its own cultural system that in some ways is different from the cultural system of other age ‎groups and of society at large. A generation’s period, based on the traditional definition of ‎generation, can cover ten to fifteen years or so during which the individuals’ aspirations and ‎belief systems remain stable and radical attitude change is not prevalent. However, once we have ‎redefined. The ‎Generational Gap in Contemporary Iran the concept of generations, we would be ‎methodologically able to say that the cultural values of each age group can be different even ‎when they belong to the same generation.‎ Third, the difference between generational subcultures also requires our attention. In more recent ‎years, women are more active in some cultural institutions than men (e.g. Abdollahyan and ‎Mortazavian, 1998). The same thing can be said about male and female generations in Tehran ‎compared to other small cities or rural areas. It is evident that the modernization process of the ‎pre-1980s centralized the process of change in Tehran and did not take the same measure to ‎affect the socio-economic structures of small cities and rural areas. Therefore, cultural ‎heterogeneity is prevalent across gender groups of generations and across urban and rural areas. ‎ Fourth, it also needs to be said that working with the concept of generations in Iran forces us to ‎take into consideration the gaps in the history of Iran. While the continuity of social, political, ‎cultural, and economic institutions in a historical context provides the necessary grounds by ‎which one can follow changes, it has not been so in the case of Iran. For example, the 1979 ‎revolution rearranged almost all social, economic, cultural, and political institutions in Iran. These ‎changes should be considered as a historical gap which would bring delicate issues into the ‎understanding process of generations. This is important because many changes that are usually ‎attributed to the issue of generations might actually have been the outcome of the 1979 historical ‎gap. ‎ Fifth and finally, the relationship between the contemporary cultural changes and their logical ‎consistency with the results of the modernization process also requires our attention. Are these ‎changes a sign of a new era or are they the outcome of the modernization process? I believe, the ‎modernization discourse makes it clear that cultural changes need to happen in order for society ‎to develop (e.g. Almond & Verba, 1963:8). In this sense modernization and development require ‎modernized elites and a nation state. (see Harrison, 1988). While this might have been the case in ‎Iran, the changes that we refer to have not resulted in the production of national patterns of ‎modernized elements at the individual level. On the contrary, the modernization process has only ‎provided grounds for a diversified pattern of social relations. Therefore, when we talk about ‎generations we use them as indices of a diversified culture, not as indices of the formation of a ‎pattern of the development of a universal mentality. Considering these five theoretical and ‎methodological concerns, we are ready to construct the theory we need, in order to address the ‎problem of generations in Iran.‎ Keywords: gernerations gap, Iran, generations ideals, modernization, cultural change, age and gender-based changes.

'Generation' as a concept, both in popular and academic discourse, is highly contextual and often overloaded with different, problematic or even antagonistic meanings. According to a meta-level classification proposed by, among others, Semi Purhonen (2016), three basic ways to use the term 'generation' exist. The first, genealogical usage of the concept refers to familial generations and is dominant in anthropology, sociology of the family, studies on socialization and education, social mobility, migration and so on. The second meaning of 'generation' is synonymous with 'birth cohort' or 'age group', and designates a group of people born at the same time or during a certain period. The third use of the term is in the sense of social, or cultural or historical generations, where the very notion of a 'generation' depends on the existence of shared generational identity and self-consciousness (Mannheim, 1952). Although the three meanings are connected, they should be kept analytically distinct for the sake of conceptual clarity (Kertzer, 1983) and methodological implications. This chapter employs the concept of 'generation' mainly in the third sense, focussing on social generations in the sense of socially constructed collectivities produced by shared experiences, and being closely linked to the concept of social time and chronological consciousness (Lovell, 2007), as well as societal changes. In this chapter, 'generation' as a concept is clearly distinguished from the more neutral 'cohort' or 'age group', the latter signifying a group of people born in a certain time period without necessarily forming a generation in the social sense. The relation between the concepts of 'generation' and 'societal change' is complex and ambiguous. Often, the notion of generation is used to signify different aspects of stability, either in terms of social time, or mental structures such as values or identity. In such cases, people refer to phenomena that have 'lasted through generations', or traditions that have been passed on across generations. At other times, the concept of 'generation' is meant to describe the collective identity and solidarity that have emerged in the past but that define the values of vast birth cohorts across time. Paradoxically, however, according to a widespread conviction and line of theoretical thought in social sciences, it is only during times of (exceptional) societal changes that generations come into being: when new birth cohorts have to negotiate their

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